Faculty Spotlight Courtney Shimek

In my first semester as a graduate student, I was asked to teach an undergraduate course in literacy. I thought I would be collaborating with a faculty member, but it became clear during the introductory session that I was on my own. I had never taught anyone over the age of 8 before! I shared as many stories as I could about my experiences as a teacher, but I quickly realized that I needed to read up on how best to prepare both preservice and in-service teachers in literacy education. I joined the Teacher Education Research Study Group (TERSG) at the Literacy Research Association in 2016 and began researching literacy teaching methods, some of which are still ongoing. I spent the first 3 years of graduate school thinking I would return to the classroom to teach, but once I became immersed in my research, I knew I wanted to work at an R1 University that would allow me to continue this passion.

I was most interested in WVU because I appreciated the time and effort the faculty put into their teaching. At my previous institution, teaching was rarely discussed amongst faculty, and much of that work went unrecognized. The intention, thoughtful design, and reflection each faculty member brought to their teaching, and the fact that they regularly shared them, excited me and made me want to be a member of this faculty. And, of course, I immediately found Dr. Allison Dagen and Dr. Aimee Morewood to be strong mentors in literacy education, with a wealth of knowledge and expertise I wanted to work with.

I was the kid in middle school who got an excuse to leave PE to help the librarian restock the shelves instead, so it should not have come as a surprise that I obtained a Ph.D. in Language and Literacy Education. However, when I was teaching preschool in South Carolina, I noticed things happening in my students’ play that connected to content we had read about together, and I wanted to better understand what was happening. For example, after reading a nonfiction book comparing wolves to coyotes, I noticed my students playing wolves on the playground. Some of them became hunters, some pups, and others took care of the “pups.” They were reenacting everything we had discussed during the read-aloud! I knew there was no assessment or data collection at my school that could capture the reader responses through play that these students were engaging in. I knew then that I wanted to better understand how young readers make sense of texts, especially nonfiction texts, and how this meaning-making continues to be processed through play.

Dr. Jake Follmer and I received a small grant from WVPEC to examine the benefits and challenges of Early Childhood Classroom Assistant Teachers (ECCATs) in kindergarten classrooms. Our mixed-method study and a thorough literature review were shared with state legislators, and West Virginia is not expanding the ECCAT role to support Kindergarten, first, and second-grade teachers. While this work is by no means perfect or complete, it was nice to see our findings shared with state decision-makers and to see some steps put in place to better support teachers during a crucial time for students' literacy development.

I hope my research reminds teachers and teacher educators of the benefits of play, of read-alouds, and of allowing children to share and learn from one another in classrooms. So many teachers feel stressed and overwhelmed (rightly so). I hope my work provides a rationale for regularly implementing play in the classroom, following students' lead, and being more flexible with instruction. Literacy does not have to look one way, and when we give students space to talk, read, draw, write, and play, it is amazing what they will do on their own. Yes, as a teacher, you are meant to keep the ship between the navigational buoys, but there is good stuff happening when we allow students to take charge of their own learning.

I have a manuscript coming out in Language Arts, the flagship journal for the National Council of Teachers of English, this spring, that I am very proud of. In it, I argue that children are developing early comprehension skills when they play with one another. They develop vocabulary, learn to anticipate what comes next, and revise their understanding based on the situations, rules, and norms established by the peers they engage with. Ultimately, I hope my research challenges teachers to create spaces in their classroom for play and observe their students closely during this time to notice the important literacy skills being developed.

An entire line of my research stems from my daily work with preservice and in-service teachers. I see the challenges they are facing and work to design research to better understand them. For example, when many of my preservice teachers were entering classrooms where teachers were required to teach mandated curricula with fidelity, a group of colleagues and I set out to understand how teacher educators were helping preservice teachers navigate these challenges. We eventually designed and piloted a common assignment to help preservice teachers notice, evaluate, and make decisions about the curricula they observed being implemented in their placement classrooms. Or, I notice something I am not doing well as an instructor, and I design research with others to hold myself accountable. For example, I have designed research that intentionally built a course around culturally proactive pedagogies (something I continue to do). I have also more intentionally incorporated New Literacies (e.g., technologies, digital literacies, multiliteracies) into my courses through my research.

My hope for the field has always stemmed from the preservice and in-service teachers I engage with and learn from, both in my research and in the classes I teach. From the preservice teachers who take on entire literacy units of study before they have even graduated, to the in-service teachers doing incredible things without any recognition daily, the amount of energy, time, and expertise that goes into making schools a place students want to be is truly astounding. We work in a profession with many complexities and challenges, yet teachers continue to show up every day and do the best they can. What could be more hopeful for our future than that?